


Residency

by dashakay



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-08-03
Packaged: 2018-04-12 20:00:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4492776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashakay/pseuds/dashakay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The house is old, half-falling apart. There’s nothing particularly remarkable about the small white house, besides needing a coat of paint. But it’s their house. Theirs. Home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Residency

It takes roughly forty-five minutes to drive from VCU Medical Center to the far reaches of Goochland County, given good weather and light traffic. Scully could probably drive the entire route in her sleep. She may be asleep right now, for all she knows.

The grueling hours of the first year of residency are hard enough on the newly minted doctors in their twenties. Try being in your forties, she thinks, gripping the steering wheel hard. Her feet hurt, her knees hurt, her brain actually hurts, but it’s a good hurt.

Strep throat cases, sprained ankles, ingestion of bubble bath, a blue Lego up the nose, all in a day’s work as a peds resident. In the last twenty-four hours, she’s wiped away tears, dodged projectile vomiting, and reassured parent with anxiety-creased faces.

It’s nothing like ministering to the dead. Live patients wiggle and cry and drool. They refuse to hold still for suturing and sometimes pee on her. She loves almost every minute of it.

No stars in the sky tonight. The weather reporter on WRVA radio is gleefully predicting overnight snow. Scully shivers at the thought and briefly wishes she had been matched to the University of Miami Hospital.

She bites her lip to keep herself awake. Only five miles to go.

*

The house is old, half-falling apart. There’s nothing particularly remarkable about the small white house, besides needing a coat of paint. But it’s their house. Theirs. Home.

It still feels odd to own a house after those many months on the run, hiding out in shabby motel after shabby motel. After that, there was the apartment in Richmond but it never quite felt like theirs. They hardly unpacked, not trusting that the fragile legal truce would hold. But the day came when all was settled and they impulsively bought the house on a hot August afternoon.

She pulls the car into the drive behind the house and parks, glad to see lights on and smoke curling from the chimney.

Home. At last.

Inside the house, it smells like wood smoke and something savory. Still in her coat, toting her overstuffed bag, she steps into the kitchen. Mulder is engrossed in chopping onions with the concentration of a diamond cutter. He doesn’t notice she’s standing there, or the cold air that came through the back door with her. So much for his finely honed investigator’s senses.

She pauses to watch this abnormally domestic scene, amused as always at her house-not-husband’s attempt to cook. Just in case, she keeps all the supplies for suturing in the bathroom closet. One of these days, Mulder’s bound to chop off the tip of his finger. She’d bet twenty bucks on it.

“I think you could probably find some good knife skills videos online,” she says, suppressing a smirk.

Mulder looks up, momentarily startled. “Oh, it’s you.” He sounds relieved. It’s difficult to get out of that fugitive mindset. She knows that all too well. He sets the knife down on the cutting board.

“Expecting someone else? A dinner date?” She leans against the kitchen wall.

“No dinner date. I got myself a steady girl now.”

He kisses her and his mouth tastes like cinnamon gum. She strokes the stubble on his cheek. “I thought we agreed no beard.”

“The Ted Kaczynski look is all the rage with the kids these days.” He grins.

That’s precisely what worries her. Mulder is alone all day, with just the Internet and its crackpot theories for company. Once upon a time he had the structure of the Bureau to keep him somewhat in line. Mulder and too much time on his hands are an alarming prospect.

Best to change the subject. “What’s for dinner?”

Mulder opens the oven and shows off a browning bird with a flourish. “The Barefoot Contessa’s Foolproof Roast Chicken.”

She feels her left eyebrow rise. “The Barefoot Contessa, huh? Sounds sexy.”

He closes the oven door. “She is, in a lush, matronly way.”

“It had better be foolproof. We don’t need a repeat of the blackened salmon incident.”

“The salmon was supposed to be blackened.”

“Of course it was.”

Mulder trails a line across her cheekbone with his fingertip. “Are you all right? You look tired.”

She shrugs. “I am tired. On a permanent basis, I suspect. And my skin is probably covered with every cold and flu virus in the state of Virginia.”

“That’s a cheerful thought.” He withdraws his finger. “Go. Disinfect. I’ll have a glass of wine waiting for you when you’re clean.”

Maybe having a house-not-husband isn’t the worst thing in the world.

*

The house’s furnace desperately needs to be replaced but she can’t fault the hot water heater. Steaming water sluices from the showerhead onto her aching back and she almost moans in ecstasy. During the last hours of her eighteen-hour shift, she kept thinking about how many hours she had left until she could take a shower. Scully lathers herself in mint and rosemary scented bubbles and tries to let the stress of the day run down the drain.

This first year of her residency has been surprisingly tough. She’s had to start all over again. No longer an expert in her field, she’s at the mercy of the attending physicians, some of them a decade younger than she. Every day she has to prove herself—prove her intelligence, her stamina, her patience in the face of sick and hurting children. Children who sometimes remind her of…

No. Not tonight. She won’t let her brain trap her in that wicked loop of self-recrimination and sorrow. Stay in the moment, she reminds herself. Advice from Donna, her therapist. She leans back into the spray and feels the shampoo bubbles slither down her back.

Breathe in and out. Center yourself in the moment, she thinks.

The shower curtain opens with an appalling screech of metal rungs on the rusted rod. Mulder is standing there with a sly look on his face and wearing not a stitch of clothing. “Need any company? A trusty lifeguard?”

Subtlety, thy name is not Fox Mulder. “There’s not a lot of room in here,” she says, squeezing excess water from her hair. “I’m just getting out anyhow.”

He takes a step back to make room for her. “Towel Boy, at your service.”

She turns off the shower and steps out of the tub into the warm embrace of a bath towel and Mulder.

*

The bedroom feels chilly after the warm, fragrant bathroom. Goosebumps rise on her skin and she shivers. Mulder flings himself onto the bed and pats the space beside him. “I’ll keep you warm,” he says.

Scully lets the towel drop to the floor, enjoying the expression on Mulder’s face as she does so. “You’re going to have to do all the work,” she says. “I’m beat.”

“Fine with me. I’m generous like that.”

She joins him at his side. His skin feels cool against hers, cool and remarkably soft. He kisses her with a needy mouth. It’s been a while for them, she thinks. Probably too long but work has often drained her most of her energy and passion. Nevertheless, despite her exhaustion, she feels her heart quickening as he kisses her harder, his hands wandering to explore her body.

Good hands, she thinks. Mulder would have made a fine doctor, with excellent diagnostic skills. She closes her eyes and enjoys the ride as his lips and tongue trace intricate patterns into the skin of her neck, her breasts, her belly. “When you use the rosemary soap you taste like a lamb chop,” he says and she laughs.

Between her legs now. Good, just where she wants him. He’s so very, very skilled at this, at knowing just how much pressure to apply to just the right spots. Sometimes it can take her a long time to come, to get to that perfect point where it all implodes in pleasure but tonight her orgasm comes swiftly, surprising her with its almost unbearable force. She can hear herself crying out, making nonsense words. Mulder calls it speaking in tongues, bad pun very much intended.

Scully slowly returns to her body, out of breath. Mulder is on top of her, his erection pressing insistently into her thigh. “Now?” he asks.

“Now,” she agrees.

Yes, that’s right, oh so right, she thinks as he slowly slides into her. It’s always so right, from the first awkward time years ago to this day. Always so right, their rhythms in sync. This should go on forever, don’t stop, just don’t, don’t you dare stop.

She rises to meet each thrust, feeling it building again, oh God, so good, so…yes. Oh, yes. As she bucks against Mulder’s pelvis, she hears him moaning, his own glossolalia in response to hers. She thinks she hears him cry her name out but she can’t really tell. She’s beyond rational thought.

And then they are still, breathing together.

“That was worth the wait,” he says and kisses her.

Scully pauses to catch her breath. “I’m sorry it’s been so long,” she says. “It’s just that—“

He interrupts her by tweaking her nose. “You don’t need to apologize. I’ve told you that a hundred times. “

“Still, I could be more attentive,” she says, rolling onto her side.

“Shut up, Scully.”

She sighs, feeling content for the first time in too long. Everything is just right, everything but…

“Mulder, what’s that smell?” Something acrid is in the air.

“What?” He sits up and sniffs the air. “Oh, shit. My chicken!” Mulder shoots out of bed and bolts out the door, stark naked.

She starts laughing and can’t stop for a full two minutes. The wacky adventures of Fox Mulder, House-Not-Husband, now airing Sunday nights on the FOX network.

A minute later Mulder pokes his head in the doorway, ruefully shaking his head. “I have bad news. The corpse is immolated beyond recognition.”

“Do you need me to perform a post-mortem exam?”

“I need you to order a pizza.”

“Why me?”

“You distracted me. This is all your fault, Scully.”

She knows the number of Gianni’s Pizzeria by heart. The phone guy recognizes her voice and asks if she wants the usual. There have been a number of cooking disasters requiring emergency pizza since they moved into the house.

“They’ll be here in a half hour to forty-five minutes,” she reports, hanging up the phone.

Mulder jumps back into bed. “That should be just enough time,” he says, grinning.

“I’m tired and hungry. And you promised me a glass of wine.” She yawns dramatically for effect.

He guides her hand to his cock, which is already hard again. She wonders if he has a secret Viagra stash somewhere on the premises. “Good things come to those who wait,” he says.

They do, she thinks. They waited long enough. All those lonely years together, yet miles apart, in the Bureau. 

Time to live in the moment, live for now. The sky could fall tomorrow, aliens could land. Anything could happen but there’s no use dwelling on it, not right now. Her therapist is right, as usual. Live in the moment.

Pizza is on its way and there’s a bottle of wine with her name on it. Later, if she can stay awake, they may put a scary movie in the DVD player and watch the snow falling outside the windows.

They’re here, they’re together, they’re home.


End file.
